An on-going project with Celebkiriedhel to default EA objects using better organization and textures.

I mentioned at N99 that I was starting to default EA objects for my game so that they would have more useful textures , and Kiri asked me what textures I was using and suggested that maybe we could coordinate on this as a project. I thought that was a great idea and we are using this thread at N99 to discuss how we will proceed. I've set up this section to share or resources and eventual default files with anyone whose interested in using them.

The story so far (copied from the N99 thread so everyone here can know what's been said already!)...

Amythestfenix:A new thread to continue a conversation started by Kiri about defaulting objects!

I haven't done all that many things so far and I think Michelle has done lots of beautiful objects in a very consistent set of woods. If she's all right with us defaulting her objects, I'd be happy to use them, but with the fabrics in my palette, because I use those colors a lot I do need an added black wood, white wood, and cherry wood to round out the colors. What would you think about these?

Kiri:I have asked Michelle over at Leefish previously, and she was ok with it, but I will get a proper email and response with her just to cover us.

Those are gorgeous woods - and I am quite happy to use them. I'm also thinking that with the wallpapers, getting the header and footer in all 5 woods will mean that we've got a decent matching set of walls and floors that will match the build set as well.The textures are gorgeous - and I'm very happy to use them for the defaults, and maybe add a few recolours of other colours in the same tonal range to broaden it out. (Similiar but not as excessive as Piggi's)

I think Black and White are essential - not just in the woods for furniture - but also in the walls, floor and build objects.

I reckon the way to do this would be choose a functionality and work through it. Like for instance - seating. Certainly your fabrics definitely fit with those.

I have a few questions though - because I am an organisation junkie!

1. Do we want to match up the colour we default to with the original colour?

Eg.The base game durable sofa has - brown, blue, pink, green textures - so we use the brown on brown, blue on blue, the burgundy on pink and the green on green, and then add recolours of the grey and gold.

That way people can pull them or out as they choose, and the room doesn't turn into something completely hideous when the EA textures return (only partially hideous.. because hey they are EA textures).

If we do do this - what about objects that only have 1 texture - say for instance the fists of bunny picture - so we can't include all the different wood textures - only the one? Or do we want to leave the decor alone?

2. Shall we have a naming standard so that they are easy to track down and pull in or out of the game as required?e.g.Default-Seating-Base-DurableSofa-Amythest-Brown.package

That would be my suggestion. That way people who don't have a particular stuff or expansion pack can remove those defaults from their game.The question is - do you want to pick a functionality that we work on at the same time? Or do we want separate and choose different functions so that we are sure of not overlapping?And I've become quite fond of grouping like functions together.

3. Do we want to put all the recolours for one object in one package or split them up? I'm kind of thinking of splitting them up - on the other hand, I know in my game I'm going to have them in one package, because I like the smaller numbers. Or maybe we should do both?

4. I'm happy to create the default packages for the ones of N99 who are uncomfortable to do that (although) it is very easy. Do we also want to share the recolour templates as we go as well? That way we end up with a database of templates that can be used for excess recolourage joy!

5. As for where they live - I am very happy for them to live at Sims2Artists on your downloads forum. Is that ok with you, or should we do something different?

6. With walls and floors - using the above woods makes lots of good sense. Do we want to have a larger colour palette, or just use the EA colour palette for paints/paper/etc. I'm all for leaving the bricks and stones as is. But I wouldn't mind rectifying the tiles to something matchy and usable and in your colours (can I call them our colours, seeing as I love them and want to use them too?)

I'm pretty sure I've worked out how to do default walls and floors too by the way.

Yes I am a very questioning sort of girl

I have actually done some bath sets as recolours previously in many colours that have never been released to the public (because I never made them completely up - that was when I stopped last time) So I've got all the templates for the bath things - as I recall.

Is there any other thoughts? I think that's all for the moment.

AF:Fortunately, we are both organisation junkies!

1. EA does not seem to have much of an organising scheme to their textures, so while I am happy to match where possible, I think it would be better to have a priority list, so we get as many in-game matches as possible with the defaults. Let's say we agreed on ALmedium, white, ALdark, black, ALlight, cherry as the rank order of preferred colours (doesn't have to be, we could choose a different order)- if there's only one texture, it will be ALmedium; if two, ALmedium and white; and so on. That way EVERY wood object would come in at least one matching texture Same with the fabric colours (which can definitely be "our" colours).

I definitely want to do the decor I think is ugly- especially the paintings!

2. My current naming standard is DEFAULT_EABGtablediningclub_amythestfenix, using the actual texture name instead of the catalog name for the item, since I think the catalog names are different in various game languages. I started with BG objects, because I think that's one of the worst sets of textures around. I think each taking a function and working our way through it would help keep us from accidentally duplicating each other's work. Where possible, we'll use Michelle's already done AL textures for the woods.

3. I'm also currently doing all textures in one package, since I don't really want thousands of files in my game. So I suggest we give our standard texture scheme a name (I am not a thinker-up-of-clever-names) and name the files like this: DEFAULT_EABGtablediningclub_clevername. Then people who wanted them would know what our scheme was (since we would have described it already for them) and they would know that all our defaults would follow the plan.

4. I'm happy to let you create the default packages (which any one can use to put in whatever textures they'd rather have than ours if they wish) and I will be happy to share all recolor templates I make. I use the ancient PSP7, however, so I am usually going to share a .png shadow layer and others will have to put layers together in their own graphics program to really have a functioning template. I am all for encouraging excess recolourage joy! I will also gladly grab any templates you wish to share for any item I don't have.

5. I would be happy to post them at S2A and will start a new board for this project this weekend. I can have a section for templates/shadow layers and textures (woods and fabrics), and another for the actual defaults with child boards by expansion/stuff packs.

6. I think we should use our texture palette for everything and not worry about the EA lack of one. If EA had been consistent with a palette, I wouldn't need defaults! I currently have a color palette of over 100 colors and would be happy to expand the range from 6 to infinity and beyond...however, what we should probably do is choose and prioritize extra colors in order of preference. That way, if an item has seven default colours, we would automatically know that the next colour up would be a purple- say, thistle. If 8, it would be pumpkin. I'm really open to suggestions for future color choices!

BTW, I do not love making walls or floors, so I would be thrilled if others did them in our colours! I am very happy to hear that you know how to default them And the tile category definitely needs an overhaul! I have permission to use phoenixphaerie's subway tile textures which are my favorites, so I've been meaning to get those done for quite a while- I think they may need an AL-friendly top molding and I would love them as defaults.

As you can see, I am very excited to be working with you on this project! Let me know your thoughts; I'm willing to compromise on most things

Kiri: 1. I agree. I think priority works very well for wood, and we should should also come up with a priority for the fabric colours.2. Coolness. I agree!3. clever name - like a kind of code? that sounds do-able. Given that we're using a priority, it can be as simple as 1Wood1Fabric, where the number is however many types of wood is in the object. That way, with the list of priorities, they'll know how many of the wood types and what they are just by looking at the list.With the walls - I think with walls and floors we'll need to consider a slightly different naming system because each wall has exactly one texture image, so they're going to be singular.4. I use PSP7, but have found that I can create PSD files as well - for the Photoshop users out there. Which is a little simpler than doing a whole stack of png files. Tried this over at GoS with the Wallpaper challenge and no-one complained so I think this is probably the way to go.5. That sounds perfect!

6. That sounds great - I'd love to see your colour palette. I'm doing some tile walls in Tiffany Blue for a friend, so I wouldn't mind including that colour in the list somewhere. But I'm pretty easy with what colours we use. EA does have a bit of a system with paint and paper. And they do have quite a few colours in it so 100 may not be so strange. But I also do think that some of their colours (e.g. Beach Sand, and some of the other neutrals) are worth keeping.

In walls-paints, the colours are separated into brights, jewels, pastels and neutrals. I actually do think that having a sub-priority similiar in our palette for walls and floors would be a good idea. As it will allow some easier way of differentiation, and there's always choices.

I've got the template from GoS with AL-friendly ceilings in the standard trims for paint and paper. So that's completely do-able. Tiles is also do-able but I'll need to generate the template first.Walls and Floors are good for me, I quite enjoy doing them.

So what function are you currently working on? And which one haven't you touched yet so I can start?

AF:My current color palette is here and I've done a lot of items in it so I'm very attached to it. My priority on the 6 fabric textures I've currently got is Twilight (blue), burntalmond (brown), asparagus (green), inkwash (grey), toffee (gold), and cardinal (red). Textures for most of my linen solids are here for download. Would that order work for you, or would a different order be preferable? I think I'd like to do the woods in this order: ALmedium, white, ALdark, black, ALlight, cherry; but would be willing to switch them around if you like something else. It may be necessary to change the default TXMTs for some items so that the match is better as well. I assume that would work the same way defaulting the TXTR does.

Naming for objects could be DEFAULT_EABGtablediningclub_KAFwood9 (KAF is for Kiri-AmythestFenix) and that table does have 9 default wood textures! So I'll round up so more woods for us to select and prioritize and try to find out the largest number of default fabric textures used by an object.

I think I'll leave the walls/floors system up to you, as you will be working with it most. Walls that work with our core colors can replace the worst EA eyesores and the decent ones (I like most of the EA poured walls) can be kept.I've started with seating and surfaces, but I'll be re-doing what I have anyway to match our new choices, so I think I'd like to take BG seating: beds, sofas, armchairs to start.

Kiri:Okey dokey. I'll do walls and floors first, and build items.

My plan so far for floors -

1. Carpet - replace the solids with our palette. Make some decisions on the patterned carpets - but also have them in our colours. Some of the patterned ones leave as is, others replace with just a better pattern in good colours.2. Wood Floors - I'm tempted to leave these mostly alone and just do completer sets in our woods. Replace the basic ones, but ones like Smitty's weathered collection - to leave alone paint splattered floors in a grey wood are pretty useful as is. It might be worthwhile to have a poll here to see which woods people don't use in general, just to get some feel of which ones to replace. The parquets are the ones I generally don't use at all, so I think a bit of guidance from N99 and S2A may be helpful. I think with the parquet pattens that we end up keeping, that I'd like to have them in all our wood textures.3. Lino - the lino colours need to be replaced. Whoever thought that bright green and pink goes together has some 'colour' issues.4. Tiles so need to be standardised. Too many not matching. And they need to match with the walls.5. Poured. I actually like all of these - I think a completer set with our colours rather than replacing the EA ones.6. Brick. Similar to Poured. What we need is a completer set to match the brick walls, rather than replacing the EA ones.

Walls:Bricks - There are a number of sets here - I'd like to preserve the sets, but upgrade some of the textures. So for example the MechaMural has 5 walls in the set - 1 plain, and 4 with half-walls where the bottom is a different colour. (Green, Gray, Black, Brown). I'd prefer to replace them with our colours in our order.There are about 4-5 different finishes - quoining, wood panelling (Light/Dark), a plain quoining, and a metal panelling. I think we'd be better with completer sets for some of these rather than defaulting them.So Brickfest (a grey base game brick) for example, already has a quoining completer set by me at N99 site, (I use Brickfest a lot) but it doesn't have the plain quoining, or the wood panelling. The metal panelling I'm not convinced that it's necessary.The quoining for bricks I think would be nice if we could match it to the Walls of Stone by Dave's Masonry set - so having more quoining sets to choose from. And add the original quoining set colour to the Walls of Stone - again this is a completer set rather than a default.

Siding -The M&G Siding has to go - it's horrible colours and horrible colour matching.I'd like to see shingles, siding, scallop shingles, vertical siding,wood clapboard(that's the diagonal) in each colour that we choose. And with white panelling,There's actually a few types of siding - aluminum which has a wide board, advanced clapboard - wood with a medium board, and unexpected siding, wood with a thin board. I think we should make the colours in all of the types.Then there's specialty siding - that mostly came in with Bon Voyage. That's the log cabin stuff, and the tribal siding. I think we should just leave that alone.I'm not sure what we should do with the corrugated iron vertical siding... any thoughts?

Poured -I love the plain ones and I think the colours are fine, although they could always do with some more of our colours.I think the Panelled version could be updated with our woods though - matching our med wood with theirs, and our dark wood with theirs. I'm not sure that white wood or black wood would work with the poured panelling?I think the plain ones should all have quoining versions rather than just the seabreeze, dark rose, putty, and sunshine.And again - there are completer sets to be done. Because as usual, EA does not finish their sets.The stucco with moulding - I think it should be done in our woods - but again apart from replacing the medium and dark woods that they've got, the rest should be completer sets.

There is one Poured set that I'm not sure I've ever used or ever seen anyone else use - that's the JaWall covering. I think we can co-opt that set to add to the poured.

PaintThere are a lot of colour sets in this - white, medium, dark trims, wainscotting, panelling. There's also weathered versions, and many versions with wallpaper borders.Do we want to preserve the wallpaper borders or replace them with something better but in the same style? So for instance the kid paint set 'Hopalong Bunnies' on the pastels. Do we want to re-use the Hopalong Bunnies? Or pick another kids border that matches our pastel palette? Or skip the borders entirely?

PaperThis one I'll need to discuss with you a lot I think. Each wallpaper generally has the same trim sets as Paint does. And I do think having wallpapers that pick up the same colours as the ones we choose for the paints is a good idea.

There are quite a few specialty sets that I'm at a bit of a loss to decide what to do with. Some of them I think we should overwrite them with a better set - e.g. Zen Zip Zoom and Sticky Stacker.There are some that I think may look better if we update it a bit - eg. Skyline set. A rose gradient behind Black silhouettes is not really the sunset that it should be.There are some I don't know what to do with - eg. the castle series from Family Fun. Do we keep it as is? Do we update it? Do we scrap it? I don't know.

TilesA lot of tiles would be fine if they had matching floors.A lot of tiles would be very useful if they were less neon.A lot of tiles are pretty good as is - multi-tile mosaics for example (and they have matching floors).So I do think that replacing the neon tiles would be a great idea. Updating some of the tiles with the PPh subway tiles would be wonderful, and doing completer sets for some.Some completer sets have already been done at N99 Maxis Match.

PanelsThere are many panels that are abominations to man and sim. In particular the plastic panelling. Eeuw!The future waffle series is a good idea ruined by choice of colours. I'm planning to use this set with a decent set of colours for Emma (Silver Lining) for her March Project skill. It has the right shapes but the wrong colours and textures.I think the unfinished wall series is perfect as is. It really makes a great grunge place.I think the washi panelling (Japanese screens) are good, but would be better with our woods.The Arts and Crafts series are just beautiful as is, and I think adding to that series with our woods, and our palettes would be a great use of the abominations.